Benefits of Online Training for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

The business goals for small and medium-sized enterprises often include for example growth, expansion, improved customer satisfaction, or reducing employee turnover. From the perspective of the available resources, achieving these goals might be ambitious and requires some form of change. Such change might involve reformulating procedures, developing processes, recruitment skills, scaling the sales function, or for example improving the onboarding process. Almost all change involves both learning and people. Achieving business goals is a strategic issue, and learning and competence development should also be approached in the same strategic manner.

Online training offers SMEs a way to make learning systematic, measurable, and aligned with business goals. Online training is not a training format that is detached from the company's other operations, but a tool for strategic learning and competence management.

The most common challenges in (traditional) employee training

Probably some of the most common challenges that SMEs have to face when thinking about training their personnel include:

• limited resources: Employees of SMEs often have tight schedules, and there's no extra capacity. The personnel cannot be taken away for days of training without directly affecting the production, service, or customer work. Additionally, the training budgets can be limited, which restricts the possibilities to utilize external trainers, reserve venues, and compensate for travel expenses.
  
  
• lack of structure: Many SMEs don't have their own HR or training departments. In these cases, the responsibility for competence development falls on individual managers or the business owner. It's also rare that systematic approaches – such as training investments based on training needs assessment, learning paths, or measuring the effectiveness of learning – would be used in competence development.
  
  
• training disconnected from work: Traditional trainings are often one-time trainings, without any concrete connection to the everyday work. This makes it more difficult to apply the learning in practice. Without the possibility to actually apply what you have learned in real life, the effects of training are limited.
  
  
• scaling challenges: The same training often needs to be organized several times for different groups, if the trainees cannot attend at the same time. This increases costs and burdens the organization.

With online training, these challenges are easily addressed:

1. Training anytime and anywhere: Online training enables learning during work and at convenient times. The learning can be divided into short sessions that do not interrupt work but can support it.
   
   
2. Scalability without extra cost: The same training content can be shared with the entire organization at the same time. There is no need to organize separate sessions, which also saves the trainers' time.
   
   
3. The possibility to create learning paths without a training department or HR: Modern learning platforms allow the creation of learning paths from existing content and templates. Even a small company can create strategic learning programs without their own training department.
   
   
4. Easy integration of learning into daily work: Online training can be designed so that each section guides the employee to reflect: how will this affect my work, and how will I apply this in practice, how have I applied what I have learned in my work today or this week? Training is not a separate function anymore, but a part of the change and learning progress.
   
   
5. Monitoring and measuring: Online learning platforms offer analytics: who has completed a training, how long did it take, and with what kind of results? How active are the learners on the platform? This way, even small organizations can track the progress of concrete goals and also utilize the analytics as a part of the organization's other metrics.

The biggest cost factors in traditional training

Cost savings are often the key reason in switching to online training, either partially or completely. These cost savings can be made visible for example in the following way.

Common challenges and solutions

So the cost savings can be significant. However, the savings are not the only benefit SMEs can get from online training. Next, let's have a look at other challenges and how to solve them.

1. Challenge: Skills needs are not identified and the training is not targeted correctly

In SMEs, the business goals (e.g. growth, expansion, or quality improvements) require a practical change in the personnel's actions. Often the problem is that it is not clear:

• what skills the personnel already has
• what skills are needed in the future
• how the skills needs are turned into clear, measurable training goals

Without a clear skills needs assessment, training easily remains disconnected and does not provide a measurable benefit for the business.

Solution: With online training and online learning platform, learning can be managed in a goal-oriented and targeted way:

• the current situation can be mapped systematically
• the learning goals can be directly derived from the business goals
• learning paths can be created for specific target groups

This way, the training and competence development actions can be targeted to the correct people at the correct time and the training can be linked directly to the business goals.

2. Challenge: Training does not happen at the right time and doesn't support continuous development

In traditional training, schedules are often defined based on how the trainers, venues, or employees are available instead of organizing the trainings based on the business needs. As a result of this:

• the training might come too late or too early in relation to the change's needs
• there is no time to react to projects, seasons, or new strategy
• competence development remains as a one-time thing and does not form a continuum

Without timely trainings, the effect of the trainings is weaker, and without continuation, competence cannot be accumulated.

Solution: Online training and the right system enable flexible, business-driven timing:

• training can be scheduled at the start of a project, seasonal preparation, or to support change
• learning can be divided into small sessions that can easily be completed during the workday
• training is a cyclical process: assessment → training → application → evaluation → updating

This way, it is possible to use continuous competence development to support organizational agility and strategic goal-setting.

3. Challenge: Training is not targeted to the correct people in the correct ways

In SMEs, the same training is often delivered to everyone, without taking into account the person's role, experience, or skill level. This might lead to following:

• some feel that the training is too difficult, and for others, it's too easy
• resources are wasted by training also those who already have the skills
• the impact of the training is small, as the content does not meet the everyday's needs.

One size fits all–approach does not take into consideration the employees' own development pace and does not support individual growth.

Solution: Online trainings and online training softwares can offer learners targeted training: Online learning enables for example role- and level specific learning paths that are based on the learner's skill levels (e.g. beginner – intermediate – specialist – mentor). This makes it possible to:

• target content for those who need it
• use resources more efficiently: not too much or too little
• support the individual development without fragmenting the training

This way, the trainings feel more relevant, their impact improves, and the commitment to learn is genuine.

4. Challenge: Learning doesn't translate to practice, implicit knowledge cannot be utilized

Possibly one of the biggest challenges of training is that learning is not applied in the everyday worklife. In SMEs, this is visible especially when the training is not concretely related to the tasks or when the employees do not have time to reflect on what they have learned. Additionally, most of the learning is left undocumented and depends on individuals:

• development ideas are not collected systematically
• implicit knowledge of work processes is not passed on to others
• the impact of learning is difficult to see or verify

Solution: Online training and a right system make it possible to integrate the learning to the daily work. At the same time, it enables reflecting on what you have learned in your everyday life. With online training, it is possible to:

• guide the employees to evaluate how they are applying in practice what they have learned
• collect implicit knowledge systematically as a part of the learning tasks (e.g. process descriptions, case examples, development ideas)
• give the gathered information to the organization's use for example to plan trainings, develop processes, and support leadership

This way, learning changes into the organization's common property and resource asset.

5. Challenge: Learning is not linked to projects

In SMEs, much of the development work happens through projects, e.g. customer onboarding, process changes, or product development. Still, trainings are often left outside of projects or they are implemented separately from the project's schedule or goals. This may lead to:

• project teams are learning, but knowledge isn't documented or shared
• repeating same mistakes across projects
• training does not support the ongoing work but becomes a burden

Solution: Projects can be supported through learning in online trainings. Online training can be designed to directly support the project and its stages. In that case:

• trainings are scheduled and the content is linked directly to the stages of the project (e.g. start, implementing, ending)
• learning goals are linked to the project's success factors (e.g. quality of the customer work, process management, reporting)
• the connection of learning and results is tracked in the end reports, when the impact of the training becomes visible

Projects are transformed into opportunities of systematic learning and the learning concretely supports the business development.

6. Challenge: Training is time-consuming, costly, and unscalable

For SMEs, the traditional training often causes challenges from the point of view of costs and resources. Typical problems include:

• high costs (traveling, venues, accommodation, catering, trainer fees)
• loss of productive working time
• limited number of participants and the need to repeat the same training multiple times
• one-time materials, which increase the cost even more

This makes competence development very heavy financially and operatively, especially if there is a training need that concerns the whole organization.

Solution: Online training makes trainings scalable, repeatable, and cost-effective. As mentioned above, transferring to online trainings helps to minimize most of the costs related to the traditional training. At the same time, the training content becomes repeatable and long-lasting, the same training can be offered to a large participant group at the same time, and the training can be split into sessions that can be learned during the work day, which saves working time. As a result, the costs are significantly reduced and the trainings are more goal-oriented, accessible, and have a greater impact. The trainings turn into strategically profitable investments.

7. Challenge: Training effectiveness is hard to demonstrate

In companies of all sizes, it is difficult to verify the results of the trainings in a reliable way. It's often left unclear what actually changed in the daily work due to the training, how well the learning goals were met, and if the training had any impact on matters that are relevant business-wise.

Without systematically measuring, it is not possible to evaluate the effectiveness of the training, or to justify the investments based on results. This, in turn, hinders the decisions about training budgets and commitment to continuous development.

Solution: With online training and online training platforms, learning and its effectiveness can be made visible. The effectiveness can be verified for example by tracking the number of production errors, speed of onboarding, improved customer feedback, the change in the employees' experiences and views, sales growth, personnel retention, or safety. What is relevant here is that the measuring is broad and targeted so that the results become meaningful.

8. Challenge: Trainings don't evolve with the organization or engage learners

Trainings are often still delivered as one-time events and implemented top-down, without involving the learners. Involving the learners in the planning of the trainings, continuously gathering feedback and taking actions according to it, and offering individual and team-specific opportunities for reflection change the trainings to adaptive processes that serve the needs of the business and its personnel at all times. The training goals can be aligned with the organization's competence management goals and information gathered by measuring. This way, trainings will become learner-driven and strategically aligned.

In conclusion

Company's competitiveness is more and more often based on competencies. A lot depends on how fast, broadly, and effectively an organization can learn. Utilizing online trainings is both a cost-effective solution to support learning, and also a strategic decision to stay ahead of change and even lead it. The right online training software helps to achieve the strategic goals, as a strategic tool. Online training or an individual software cannot solve everything, but it is a good tool for utilizing the organization's full potential.